


Point B

by ehmazing



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Denial, F/M, Feelings Realization, Pre-Canon, Teen Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 14:51:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14167284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehmazing/pseuds/ehmazing
Summary: Every crush has to start somewhere.





	Point B

**Author's Note:**

> Set between where the Origins episodes left off and before "Climatika" begins.

Marinette means to return the umbrella, she really does. She props it up next to the door to her bedroom, where the black fabric stands out enough against the pink walls that she can’t possibly miss it when she goes to leave for school. But then she’s running late, or carrying too much already, or she picks it up long enough to make it downstairs and then misplaces it by the time she’s made her way to the front door. Weeks pass and it stares her down every morning like a crow glaring from a telephone wire.

“It’s not stealing,” she tells Tikki, “I really will give it back! But it’s not like he can’t afford another umbrella—I’ve already seen his chauffeur hand him one just last Friday. And he hasn’t asked for it back either, so he won’t think it’s a big deal that I keep forgetting. Right?”

Her new friend hums, her tiny antennae poking out from the top of Marinette’s purse. She doesn’t think she knows Tikki well enough to read her expressions yet, but she looks an awful lot like she’s winking somehow.

“Of course, Marinette,” she says. “I don’t think he’ll mind at all.”

 

* * *

 

It’s strange, that after only a few weeks of school Marinette knows more about their new classmate than anyone else—save perhaps for, god forbid, Chloé—and that her entire factbase comes from back issues of _Jeunne Mode!_ magazine. She finds three interviews with Adrien Agreste from the last two years, the glossy pages slathered with images of his bright eyes and easy smile.

> **JM!:** Aside from fashion, what are you passionate about?  
>  **AA:** I love to try new things and go places—I’m practicing my Mandarin to visit Beijing this summer! I want to have a real adventure someday.  
>  **JM!:** Outgrowing the thrill of the runway already?  
>  **AA:** (laughing) I mean, sure, that’s an adventure too, but it's also my job. I want something bigger, something I get to choose, you know?  
>  **JM!:** And someone to share it with, I presume.  
>  **AA:** Sure! Well, in the future, maybe. I’ve got too much on my plate right now to be a good boyfriend to anyone.  
>  **JM!:** But wouldn’t any girl love to get a text from her boyfriend backstage at Fashion Week?  
>  **AA:** Here’s how that text would go: “Sorry I haven’t called in five days, g2g, Dad is yelling at me to get on the catwalk.”
> 
> **(Both laugh)**

“I can’t believe he’s so talkative in these,” Alya muses, flicking aside Adrien in fall brown for Adrien in spring blue. “He says hardly a word in class to anyone but Nino and that blonde beast.”

“He’s shy,” Marinette defends, tracing the fold of an Agreste lapel over Adrien’s narrow shoulder in last year’s formalwear lookbook. “He never went to public school before. He just wants to fit in and feel comfortable as himself, and he can’t do that if everyone is waiting for him to start storytelling like he’s on a talk show.”

Alya raises an eyebrow. “Which magazine did you read that in?” Marinette twitches under her gaze as she crumples paper perfume samples between her fingers.

“Just guessing,” she lies, refusing to look her friend in the eyes and be caught. “That’s how I’d feel in his shoes, anyway.”

Alya isn’t fooled; of course she isn’t, Marinette bemoans when she finds a brand new _Jeunne Mode!_ crammed into her locker before second period. Next to Adrien’s head on the cover is an orange sticky note in the shape of a speech bubble, declaring, _You’re the only one who understands me <3_ from his pursed lips. Later that week there’s a poster too, and then a half-peeled House of Agreste label, and then just a cutout of his face smoldering from the pages of her history textbook.

“My mom is going to ask me why my homework smells like cologne!” she complains, but Alya just giggles as she doodles sunglasses over Adrien’s eyes during free period. But despite this completely unwarranted pranking, Marinette huddles over Alya’s shoulder as they take the "Are You Adrien’s Perfect Date?" quiz at lunch.

> **1\. You’d prefer to start your weekend with:**  
>  A: A walk in the park  
>  B: Dinner and a movie  
>  C: A token spree in the arcade  
>  D: The new exhibit at the museum
> 
> **2\. What’s your favorite sweet treat to eat?**  
>  A: Ice cream (with extra cherries on top)  
>  B: Cookies, cookies, cookies!  
>  C: Classic crepes and Nutella  
>  D: All about candy
> 
> **3\. Of all the challenges in _Mecha Strike 7_ , the hardest level is:**  
>  A: Waterpark Washout  
>  B: Hoedown Throwdown  
>  C: Jaws of the Jungle  
>  D: Trick question: nothing compares to _Mecha Strike 6’_ s Shake, Rattle, and RoboRoll boss fight!

“You cheated!” Alya howls, throwing down the pen. “You definitely read this before me! There’s no way you got a perfect score!”

She’s loud enough to turn several heads in their direction. Marinette hurriedly stuffs the magazine back into her bag when she spots Nino’s hat swiveling towards their table, revealing a blond head behind him.

“I didn’t cheat!” she insists. “It doesn’t matter anyway; those quizzes are just written by the magazine, never by the celebrities.” A mangled corner is caught in the teeth of her bag’s zipper. Ink from Alya’s gel pen rubs off on her hand when she tries to fold it back.

> **4\. If you had superpowers, what would they be?**  
>  A: Flight and super speed  
>  B: Invisibility and mind-reading  
>  C: Super strength and invulnerability  
>  D: Magic blasts and an animal guide

 

* * *

 

When fall grades come in, Marinette is in trouble. She knew that being Ladybug was cutting into her study time, but she didn’t think it would show this badly so soon. Screw that butterfly guy—whoever is cruel enough to create supervillains on school nights clearly doesn’t have any kids.

“Your scores have dropped significantly since the beginning of the year, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng. If you don’t improve, I’m afraid it will affect your performance on _le brevet_ next year.” Leclair looks concerned, which is the worst part. Marinette tries to will her face to remain relaxed but she can already feel a hot flush of shame creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. “Is there something that’s troubling you? If you’re not understanding the material, I’d rather you ask for help now than wait until the exams.”

“I’m sorry, Madame,” she says, tugging at the strap of her bag and wishing she could sink into the smooth tiled floor. “Nothing’s wrong, I just didn’t put in enough work. I’ve been having a hard time getting everything done because—because, uh—“ Marinette bites her lip, trying to think of a way to explain and not-explain being a superhero. “Because I got a new after-school job!”

Leclair’s expression softens a little. “I see. Well, balancing work and life is always going to be hard. But you’re still young, and school should be your first priority for now! Could you ask your boss to reduce your hours, maybe?”

“I’ll try.” Marinette thinks longingly of kicking her arch-nemesis in his evil shins.

Madame Leclair puts her on the after-school tutoring roster, a kind gesture Marinette feels she doesn’t fully deserve, especially since she put the teacher in a headlock last week when Leclair was flinging an akuma-possessed protractor like a boomerang and calling herself “Trigonometriste.” She writes down her phone number on the sign-up sheet and promptly forgets the whole affair by evening when she has to wrestle a kiosk owner going by “Bad News” down from the Arc de Triomphe.

One week later she gets a text from “A. Agreste" asking when she’s free to review algebra word problems.

She can’t even begin to explain to her parents how on earth she managed to fling her phone from her bed loft all the way through the trap door and into the wet soil of a potted plant on the roof.

 

* * *

 

“Train A leaves London at 14:00 and travels toward Paris at 72 kilometers per hour.” Adrien pencils in two dots and draws a line between them. “Train B leaves London at 15:00, traveling at 90 kilometers per hour.” He adds another line next to the first. “If neither makes any stops, what time will they both arrive in Paris?”

Marinette clamps her pencil between her teeth, staring at the dots and lines on the page and trying to focus on the numbers, not on how Adrien can apparently draw perfectly straight lines in one try.

“So we have distance, speed, and time.” He pushes the paper towards her. “Which formula do we use?”

“Uh, we don’t have a distance—at least I don’t think so?” Marinette scans the paragraph again to be sure. “Do I solve for that first?”

“You don’t need to.” Adrien reaches across the table, retracing the two lines. His arms are long and nicely-shaped. She remembers vaguely that he plays some kind of sport where you swing something. Was it tennis? Bowling? “See, they’re traveling along the same path, just at two different speeds. All you need to figure out is when they both arrive at the same place, which means they need the same formula. Distance is…”

“Speed times time.” Marinette dutifully pencils in _d=rt_ at the top. She adds _d=72x_ next to the first line and _d=90(x+1)_ next to the second.

“Ah, wait—“

She looks up, but Adrien has left his chair across the table. She barely has a moment to breathe before one of those long, lean arms braces against the table around her left shoulder and another gently pushes her right hand aside. Marinette straightens up quickly and hears the sound of her hair brushing against top-quality cotton.

“This is the tricky part.” When Marinette turns her head, Adrien’s cheek is hardly a hand’s-width away from her own. He has the longest eyelashes she's ever seen. “It seems like you should make the second time _x+1_ because it’s an hour later, but it should actually be _x-1_ because it has one less hour than Train A to get to the same place.” He faces her, his mouth quirking at one corner in a kind smile. “Does that make sense?”

“Y-Yeah.” She swallows. Her mouth tastes like eraser shavings; she really needs to stop chewing on pencils. Her mom has always said the lead will make her sick someday. “You make perfect teeth—tense—sense!”

Adrien furrows his brow for a moment, but smiles again and pulls away, the air around her now bereft of the smell of his shampoo. Marinette’s brain wanders down the road of what brand it could be before she forcibly steers it back to trains and numbers. She solves the equation and feels quite triumphant when Adrien assesses her answer with a proud nod. Triumphant about math. Only math, and nothing else.

Unfortunately her triumph over math never lasts for long. Two word problems later her pencil is back between her teeth, being ground into pulp.

“Why do mathematicians love trains so much?” she grumbles, glaring at the triangle Adrien has drawn between dots labelled Paris, Nantes, and Marseille. “You’d think nobody measured speed and distance before there were trains. Were old word problems like, ‘If a wagon leaves Village A at 2 kilometers per hour, how long will it take a donkey cart from Village B to catch up before they get to the farm?’”

It takes her a moment to realize that the strange, beautiful sound in the room is Adrien laughing.

“True! Math was probably much easier,” he says, giggling again, “when most people couldn’t read.”

What Marinette wants is to say something funny again in return. What Marinette says is a profoundly unfunny, “Um. Y-yeah.”

“So, then,” Adrien picks up, tapping the abandoned question in front of her and somehow still smiling, even though she has now proven herself an utter failure at both math and jokes, “which donkey cart will be the first to reach Nantes?”

On the Métro she replays his laugh about a thousand times in her head and blames him entirely when she nearly misses her stop.

 

* * *

 

This isn’t obsession. Marinette knows what obsession looks like, and it looks like her wearing her shirt backwards to school the morning after she stayed up until 3 am to watch five shows live from New York Fashion Week. Obsession looks like her begging her parents on hands and knees to let her dye her entire wardrobe orchid purple for about a month before orchid was out and olive green was in. Obsession looks like her twelve-year-old haircut copied directly from a photo of Mylène Farmer and paired with the same neon orange poncho for the better part of a year.

She’s not obsessed with Adrien Agreste. She’s a _fan_ of the designs of Gabriel Agreste, and his son Adrien _happens_ to be in nearly every ad for said fashion house. Which her dad traitorously helped Alya tack up on her walls, and she’s been too busy to take down yet.

Why would she be obsessed with Adrien? She doesn’t know him, not really. She knows the Adrien in video clips and on blogs. The Adrien who winks playfully at newscasters and the Adrien who timidly watches Ivan and Nino trade mixtapes and jumps whenever they say his name are so different in her mind that they may as well be two separate people entirely. She knows a half-fictional Adrien, one who exists only on pages and screens. It’d be silly to get obsessed with someone who was never real to begin with.

But then she will look down at the boy in the front row and his smile will come out like the sun after the rain. He’ll laugh at Alix’s bad jokes, or wave hello to Max with a perfectly poised hand, or talk about a new movie with Nino as if it’s the most exciting thing in the world, and Marinette’s heart will stutter off-beat in her chest. Adrien Agreste has gone from pixels on her computer screen to flesh and blood, and she finds herself proud that she’s becoming more familiar with the latter version. Sometimes she thinks she would recognize him anywhere, not from the label on all of his clothes, but by the way he tilts his head to read, or raises his eyebrows when he laughs.

Then the teacher calls on him in class, and the fear in his voice as he corrects her chemistry formula is so foreign that at all once he is a stranger once more.

“So you’re not ‘obsessed’ with Adrien,” Alya sighs, giving in, “but you have to admit you’re obsessed with _something_ about him.”

“I just want to figure him out,” Marinette sniffs indignantly. “You should understand, you’re practically a detective!”

“Blogger and detective are not the same thing. Like, at all.”

“A journalist is just a detective that gets paid to write everything down! My point is, you should understand wanting to solve mysteries. Adrien Agreste is a mystery.”

“Mystery how? He has his own Wikipedia page!”

“Mystery like—like—“ Marinette taps her pencil against her chin. “Like he’s holding back. Even when he’s being himself, there’s something underneath that’s really bugging him and he can’t talk about it. Or maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it. Or maybe he _does_ want to talk about it but he doesn’t trust anyone with it yet.” She pokes Alya’s nose before she can make a remark. “Oh, be quiet! Like I said, it’s a mystery and I’m having a hunch!”

“I didn’t say anything,” Alya grumbles, rubbing the tip of her nose.

But if she’s not obsessed, Marinette still has to answer her own question: what is Adrien hiding, and why does she care?

 

* * *

 

It is a terrible injustice, she’s told Tikki over a hundred times, that her Lucky Charm won’t stick around after the Miraculous has lost battery power. It is totally unfair that Ladybug, Savior of Paris, can’t even summon a magical pillow to make napping in the janitor’s closet during lunch more comfortable. It’s a crime, even!

“Marinette,” Tikki sighs, perched on the nozzle of some window cleaner, “I’ll wake you up when the bell rings.”

Despite longing for a polka-dotted pillow, she manages to doze off on a roll of paper towels. She’s in the middle of a bizarre dream in which the Eiffel Tower is made of baguettes and Chat Noir is tutoring her in math when the closet door opens, spilling in light.

“Tikkiiiiii,” she moans, covering her eyes with her hands, “I need five more minutes, there’s too much bread on the Champ de Mars…”

“Oh! I’m sorry!” The voice is deep, surprised, and distinctly not Tikki’s. “I, uh, didn’t think this closet would be occupied.”

Marinette opens her eyes to see Adrien standing over her, looking bewildered at her hastily-made mop nest. To say she makes a mess of the neatly-arranged shelves as she scrambles to stand upright is an understatement. By the time both her feet are steady on the ground, there is an avalanche of cleaning products burying her to the knee.

“I’m sorry—is lunch over?—oh god—I didn’t break in here—ouch!—I didn’t hear the bell ring, I was just—whoa!—I’m really tired—I, well, I bribed Phillipe the janitor with my dad’s palmiers and he let me use this—please don’t—no no no, no, don’t fall—please don’t tell anyone, uh—”

“I didn’t know Philippe liked palmiers,” Adrien says, lifting the bucket that’s fallen over her eyes and replacing it on the shelf. “I bribed him with some autographs for his daughter.” He glances over his shoulder, scanning the hallway. “There’s still fifteen minutes of lunch left. Do you mind if I join you?”

Some deeply buried, deeply powerful force that runs in Marinette’s heart, that usually only makes its appearance when she’s swaddled in a red suit, gestures to the mountain of toppled sponges next to her and boldly invites Adrien to, “Make yourself at home.”

He shuts the door behind him. That powerful force up and flies away when she feels Adrien’s arm brush hers as he flops down into the sponges, wiggling himself into a napping position.

“Ugh,” he says, “I should have brought a pillow.”

With some effort, Marinette manages to clear away the wreckage and curl back into the mops, but her chest is pounding wildly enough that she knows attempting to fall back asleep is useless. Dozens of questions run through her head and all fail to stick to her tongue. Even if one did, she doubts it would still be a coherent sentence on its way out. So she bites her cheek and listens to Adrien breathe, in and out, in and out.

“Jet-lag,” he says, soft enough that she almost misses it. “I got back from Barcelona yesterday morning and couldn’t fall asleep last night. You?”

Marinette has a vivid flashback to combing through the entire Louvre, akumatized tour guide and living statues hot on her heels, while Chat Noir frantically clawed each painting on the wall as they raced to find which item in the collection was possessed.

“Was drafting a pattern. Lost track of time.”

Adrien shifts in the dark. “You sew?” he asks.

“A little.” She can’t fathom why she lies. Maybe covering up a secret superhero life is starting to bleed too much into her habits. “I mean, a lot. As a hobby. I haven’t sold anything or done anything, uh, professional.”

“That’s cool though.” Adrien yawns. The tip of his sneaker bumps the tip of hers. “If I sleep through the bell, can you wake me up?”

“Okay,” Marinette agrees, and for the rest of lunch she has no trouble staying awake.

 

* * *

 

After the third time he’s late to tutoring, Adrien sends her a massive spreadsheet.

_I’m so sorry, my schedule is a mess lately,_ the message reads. _If you see any free spots in here that would work for you, please let me know and we’ll schedule our next session then! Just don’t pick anything right after Mandarin or I might start writing your notes in the wrong language._

The spreadsheet is so large that she has to shrink it just to make it fit in her computer monitor. Marinette’s eyebrows raise higher and higher as she tabs through each week.

“Two hours of Mandarin lessons each Monday and Wednesday, an hour of piano practice every day, another hour-long lesson once a week, fencing on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a photoshoot, fitting, or show every weekend,” Marinette reads off to Tikki. “How does he find time to breathe, let alone tutor me?!”

She selects an empty block just before Adrien is due for a haircut and writes in her name. She moves her mouse to close the window, then realizes something.

“Hey, Tikki,” she calls, “he didn’t have Nino’s birthday party marked on here, even though it’s the one Saturday this month he’s free.” She checks the schedule again to be sure, and there: a completely blank twelve-hour chunk next weekend. “I can’t imagine he’s not invited; Nino's been talking about his party for weeks and he’s never stopped when Adrien is around. They’re always together in school, and I know they both play _Dragon Crush_ with Max and Kim sometimes at Nino’s place, so why wouldn’t Adrien go?”

But Tikki is staring out the window, her tiny eyes wide.

“You might have to figure that out later, Marinette,” she squeaks, as cotton candy begins raining down from the sky and a man in a bright blue mask cackles from the next rooftop.

When “Fear-is Wheel”—does Le Papillon come up with these in advance? Does he have a list of bad puns tacked up somewhere on the wall of his secret lair? When she finally finds this guy she’s going to let Chat loose and give him a taste of what it feels like to deal with this nonsense—is once more an ordinary citizen and the akuma has fluttered away, Marinette leans against a lamppost to stretch her gloved arms. She watches Chat Noir bid goodbye to Marcel the carnival worker and it suddenly strikes her: Chat may be the perfect neutral opinion on Adrien. After all, he knows nothing about her life and therefore wouldn't have Alya's bias. Plus, the chances of him being somehow connected to a busy, reclusive model must be slim to none.

Once Marcel has boarded the bus that will take him back to the fair, she pulls Chat aside.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

Chat glances down at his ring. “Sure, but make it quick, or your prince will turn back into a frog very soon.” He winks when she rolls her eyes.

“Alright, so there’s this guy I know who makes me…confused. He’s new to my school and people like him, and it seems like he wants to make friends, but he doesn’t, uh,” Marinette bites her lip, “try very hard? I don’t know. He’s nice and people are trying to include him, but he never seems to do anything fun. But he seems like he _likes_ having fun, so I don’t get why he wouldn’t.” She looks up at Chat, crossing her arms. “Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Hmm.” Chat cocks his head, squinting. “I think so. You want to get to know him, but he’s hard to read, and you’re afraid that you can’t tell if he actually likes you or not.”

Marinette feels like Chat has just punched her in the gut. “That’s—no, that can't be—that's not at all what I mean, I don’t—I just want—augh!” She clamps her head between her hands. “Why are boys like this?!”

Chat throws an arm around her shoulder, cackling. “I’m sorry, my lady,” he shrugs, “but there’s only one way to find out what’s up with your new friend.” He pats her back before pulling away, clicking his staff open and leaping to the top of it.

“Just ask him,” he says, and gives her one final wink before vaulting away.

 

* * *

 

On Tuesday, Marinette sits at their usual table in the library and comes close to eating her pencil whole as she waits for Adrien to arrive. _He really does need a haircut,_ she notes when he comes through the door and waves to her, and she almost giggles when he tries to smooth it down and only makes the fencing cowlicks worse.

The hour passes too quickly. It’s a miracle that any part of her brain is able to focus on algebra when her stomach is churning at the prospect of how the upcoming conversation will go. She doesn’t want to admit that part of the churning is also from her fear that Chat may be right: what if Adrien doesn’t like her? When did it start to matter to her if he does?

Suddenly, Adrien is looking at his watch and packing his bag, giving her instructions on how to complete the homework sheet. Marinette closes her notebook, tucks her tooth-marked pencil back into its case, and tries to think of how she feels when the Miraculous stones are singing in her ears and her hands are strong enough to punch through steel.

“Hey, Adrien,” she asks, “will I see you at Nino’s party this weekend?”

Adrien pauses, backpack half-zipped.

“Uh,” he says, smoothing back his hair again and making it even worse, “I can’t go. I really want to, but I can’t. I can’t take the Métro by myself.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I was just wondering—” Marinette frowns. “Wait, have you never taken the Métro before?”

Adrien twists the tab of his zipper between his fingers and laughs nervously, looking everywhere in the library but at her. “Of course I have! It’s just that when I do, I’m supposed to be with my bodyguard or my father’s assistant—or in an emergency, my father himself. I was really looking forward to the party, but then my bodyguard broke his ankle last week. Nathalie’s been watching me instead, but my father has to send her to Milan that weekend so he can select a venue for his next show. So the whole plan kind of fell apart.”

“What about your mom?” Marinette counters. “Couldn’t she take you?”

He shrugs his backpack onto one shoulder, giving her a sad little half-smile.

“Probably,” he says quietly, “if she still lived in Paris.”

Marinette has never before wished for an akuma to attack, but she begins to pray in earnest for one to crash through the ceiling, leap onto the table, and kick her clean across the room.

“Oh my god,” she croaks. “Adrien, I didn’t mean—that was so stupid of me to say—I had no idea that—”

“Hey, it’s alright, of course you didn’t,” Adrien soothes. “Hardly anyone knows. My father is terrified that it’s going to hit the press someday, so there’s a gag order on everyone who works for him about it. He won’t even tell me where she’s living now. Honestly, I don’t think he knows either.” He mumbles, “I guess we’ll both find out, if she ever sends the divorce papers.”

Adrien looks down at his watch again and jumps, hurriedly grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair.

“Crap, I’m going to be late for the salon—hey, call or text me if you have any trouble on the homework, okay? I’ll send you my schedule again so we can meet next week before the test.” He pauses at the library door, one hand on the handle. “And seriously, Marinette, don’t feel bad. It actually felt good to tell someone the truth for once.”

He gives her a wave and another smile, a little less sad than the one before it, and then he’s gone.

“It's a good idea, Marinette,” Tikki whispers from the bottom of her bag. "At least, it’s worth a try!”

She doesn’t ask how Tikki knows what she’s thinking, which may be a sign that Marinette is far too used to magic now. But maybe a little magic is okay. After all, it’s magic that’s responsible for Tikki’s little chirp when Marinette pats her head with one finger, and magic that gives her the luck not to trip down the stairs as she sprints out of the library and out of the school in hot pursuit of France’s most beloved teen model.

“Adrien!” she yells from the steps just as he’s about to step into the waiting car. “I’ll take you to Nino’s party! My dad can drive us in his delivery truck!”

The House of Agreste has worked with some noteworthy photographers. But no one, Marinette knows, could ever capture the real beauty of Adrien with too-long, too-sweaty post-fencing hair, backpack askew and shirt a little wrinkled at the bottom, looking up at you and beaming with joy.

 

* * *

 

After she hears the tale, Alya looks at Marinette with the gleeful malice of a fox who’s caught a rabbit in one leap.

“I won’t say anything to anyone,” she vows with the air of someone who is dying to say everything to everyone, “so long as you admit it.”

Marinette sprawls on the floor of her bedroom, glaring miserably at the ceiling. She takes a deep breath.

“Fine. I, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, have a huge crush on Adrien Agreste,” she declares. “Are you happy now?”

Alya leans her chin on her hand, grinning. “Oh, _very.”_

The black umbrella has more than one use: chasing Alya around the room, Marinette finds it makes a very effective weapon for self-defense.

**Author's Note:**

> Before you point out that Paris and Barcelona are in the same timezone and therefore would not give Adrien jet-lag: that's the point ;)


End file.
